John Carmack Plays Wolfenstein 3D

In tribute to Wolfenstein 3D's 20th anniversary, Wolfenstein 3D can now be played online at wolfenstein.bethsoft.com, but that's not all! John Carmack recorded himself playing Wolfenstein 3D, commenting on the various technological advances and glitches in the game. The video can be viewed here.

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Carmack sounds a lot like that ultra-nerdy guy off the big bang theory. Still, a very interesting listen. It's weird and kinda funny when he describes how much trouble he had working out the basic technical details of those early 3D engines. I reckon that's the case with a lot of things though: the hardest part of learning is at the very beginning, managing to grasp new concepts without an existing frame of reference. Once you've got the foundations, everything else can be layered on top.

It'd be great to hear a similar commentary on Doom and Quake as well, particularly since you get the impression Wolfenstein 3D wasn't much of a technical leap beyond Catacombs 3D, whereas those later titles clearly pushed things a lot further.

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For Doom they should make a vid where Carmack talks about all the broken stuff and features they took out. He can try playing with only the keyboard and show that his obvious knowledge of the AI doesn't make up for his inability to navigate the maps easily.